Bombs Away
by skyfare
Summary: Quick one-shot inspired by Faithfully. T for language.


***

He believes in God. He didn't used to. Sure, he prayed sometimes, when he couldn't think of anything else to do. Like when he was in the Army and the bombs were going off around him and he was powerless to stop them, because, okay, people he can disarm with words and physical ticks and his intellect, but _bombs_?

Bombs just destroy.

Religion can destroy, he allows. Especially organized religion. As long as he's been a believer (three weeks two days some odd hours) he's found himself torn on the idea of a structured belief system; church every week, specific prayers, mass ideals—it makes him queasy and it makes him homesick at the same time. Queasy, because he's seen the devastation, the pandemonium and terrorism and sickness religion can bring. And homesick because it's _tradition_, it's familiarity and structure and welcoming routine that he's never had before in his life.

Maybe homesick isn't the word.

Maybe just _sick._

***

These people are sick. Everyone's sleeping with everyone, everyone's hiding their true feelings and lying and killing and manipulating and this is a church, for God's sake (for _God's _sake).

Although maybe that fits.

He remembers the exact day, one day two parts, he started believing in God again.

***

He didn't want to believe it, but he could hardly deny the paperwork in front of him, the cold harsh stark fact that someone had gone through his phone records and his credit cards and all the mechanical details of his outward life.

He's a _suspect_.

In his brother's _murder_.

**One**

***

The fucking life insurance policy. The _fucking _life insurance policy. It had to be a joke, some sick cruel nightmare he would most assuredly wake up from.

Ha ha.

He's not sleeping.

He's being set up.

_Framed_.

**Two**

***

And just like that, one two _believe_, he felt the presence of God.

Yes—yes, I believe.

I believe.

I believe there is a God.

I believe God is cruel.

I believe God is watching as lives blow up and evil occurs and life ends and partners begin to investigate partners.

Nothing else could be doing this.

Nothing but God could be overseeing all these things, his dead brother and his dead mother and his dead fucking fathers, both of them.

He has a third Father now, he supposes. _One _womanizer beater coward deadbeat _two _rapist murder sociopath _Three _watching watching watching not doing anything as life falls apart and Eames investigates and Ross begins to doubt and _hey_ batter batter batter _hey_ _miss _that swing comeon _miss _that throw _hey _ball _hey _ball _hey _batter batter hey _crack _that bat comeon _smash_ that ball hey _knockitout _of the park _hey _bombs _away _hey.

***

"Hey."

Eames.

He lifts heavily-lidded eyes to hers and thinks of unforgivable sin and evil acts perpetrated on mankind but he doesn't _care _about mankind.

Just Eames.

She forgives him seven times seventy but he's afraid he's nearing the 490th time of wearing on her patience and so maybe with this she'll lose faith in him and finally, finally, turn not her cheek to him but her back.

"Ross wants you to know you're no longer considered a suspect," Eames says quietly, her hand snaking above his neck as if she's going to rest it on his back as he sits, head in hands, at his desk, but then she shifts so her hand runs instead through her hair, parting it like the sea.

"Good."

His voice doesn't belong to him.

He may as well be speaking in tongues.

"I _never_—Bobby you know I never thought it was you."

Yeah?

Well he said he'd never believe in God again, either.

***

Believing is seeing seeing is believing but he sees Nicole's DNA results splayed up against the DNA results of the heart from the box and they match, perfectly, and he still doesn't believe.

***

He has a particularly hard time believing DNA results, it seems. He rips open the envelope rolls away the stone opens the tomb and he just can't fucking _believe _the results creating the empty hollow in his heart, in his mind, because hey, his father isn't his father isn't his father, but he wanted to know, he got what he deserved because he couldn't leave well enough alone and he asked Rodgers to run the paternity test.

***

Rodgers is like a terrible stone angel as he flips over trays and shouts and curses her, her tests and words and technology and determinations and all the things she can't control (it's not like she's God, after all). She's just a missionary, presenting her valued medical opinion that the heart in question is Nicole Wallace's but he's not ready to accept it just yet and then Ross rushes in and Eames and they _make _him accept it and he begins to doubt his current conviction (_not _Nicole _not _Nicole she's _too _smart she wouldn't _let _herself get killed) and then the belief rushes in, sad and salty and sure, because someone is framing him and Nicole is dead and he's can't look back to his old life before _this _no matter how much he wants to and he's being turned not into salt but stone, hard granite sorrow.

***

Sorrow was present at his mother's funeral (as was Eames) but not at Frank's (but still Eames). He's too numb, too blank to feel anything at Frank's funeral. If you can even call it that. Frank always wanted to be cremated so that's what he did, sending his brother's body off to the crematorium to be turned not into bread but ash, gray smoky dust he scattered outside under some trees in a private ceremony consisting of him and Eames. He couldn't decide where to spread Frank at first (God, as if Frank were grape jelly to be smeared on toast).

"What about the river?" Eames suggested. "The sea? I can think of worse things than floating for eternity."

"Frank got seasick," he murmured back, barely able to resurrect his voice above a whisper. "One time he got really wasted and thought he could walk on water. He plunged right into the Hudson and kept going out, unable to see that he was just getter further and further from the shore. He could barely swim but he just kept right on going along, thinking that he was doing it, that he was like Jesus, and he probably would have drowned but these fishermen went by and saw him floundering and pulled him in. He got sick all over their boat."

"So not the sea," Eames murmured beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder and then changed her mind, wrapping her arms around his waist instead. "What about just at the cemetery, then? They have some pretty spots up there, trees and everything."

He looked down at her clinging to him and he put his own arms around her and hugged back and they stayed like that, she didn't pull away and neither did he, and he thought _this is what Heaven must be like._

***

They might call the isolation room at Tates Heaven, but it's hell. Ripping steaming red torturous hell, dragging up mental demons and evil memories and where is _Eames_, why isn't she, his personal savior, _coming_ to rescue him from this hell?

***

He watches their suspect's face collapse as she realizes she's created her own living Hell. She might not have been in Heaven before, what with her cheating husband and the twisted fascination of thirteen year olds, but she gave in to her deepest, evil impulses and she killed, and now she's going off to jail with the devil as her partner, her partner who urged to her destroy all these lives.

***

"I'm going to destroy you."

Last call at a bar, drinking shots with Eames after closing the case.

"You are not, Bobby."

"I _am_. Professionally. You're—you're not going to get promoted because of me and—" he holds his hand up as she begins to protest "—and you _should_, you _deserve _something more. God, Eames, look how good you were on this case. You—you—"

She leans forward and because the bar is empty allows her forehead to rest against his and fireworks are exploding and bombs are going off and she really _is_ his savior. "Bobby, I am right where I want to be. _Believe _me. Okay?"  
Okay.

***

So these are the things he believes in:

God.

Pain.

Forgiveness.

Heaven.

Hell.

_Eames._


End file.
